


Broposing

by killshot



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Best Friends, Fluff, Gen, High School, Humor, Prom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:35:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21695494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killshot/pseuds/killshot
Summary: jeno, jaemin, donghyuck, renjun, and yangyang do not have enough time to get girls for senior prom. wouldn't it be easier to just ask each other instead?
Comments: 15
Kudos: 65
Collections: ’00 FIC FEST: ROUND ONE





	Broposing

**Author's Note:**

> (00ff prompt #0087)  
> hey, this is my first ever ff i've been a part of! this was a super fun prompt to work with, and i hope i did the prompter justice! pls enjoy <3

“Jaem! Get over here, we need to talk!” the dirty blonde haired boy heard a voice yell at him. He shot his head up from checking his phone and saw Yangyang, arm waving in the air, beckoning him over through the sea of people in the morning hallway. Jaemin chuckled as he shoved his phone in his back pocket, folding and wiggling through the mess of his peers.

“Hey,” Jaemin slung his backpack on the ground as he stopped next to Yangyang’s open locker.

“So how do you think I should ask Renjun to prom? I was thinking donuts, maybe something with one of those stupid Disney movies he likes?” Yangyang started as he opened a new note on his phone.

“You and Renjun… prom? You two aren’t…” Jaemin stuttered, trying to find the mental note he must’ve taken when one of his best friends told him he was gay.

“NO! Oh no no no… you really don’t remember? Freshman year, the five of us??” Yangyang put a hand on the older boys shoulder. Surely he remembered.

“OH… oh my god that?? We’re doing that??? I thought it was just-” Jaemin widened his eyes in shock at the younger. They couldn’t seriously be doing this. They were 17. They had  _ reputations _ to uphold.

“YES we’re doing it! We’re seniors… what else are we gonna do?” Yangyang finished the older boy’s thought-- it was a plan they had come up with as freshmen during a science class they all managed to be placed in. Watching all the juniors be asked to prom in obnoxiously elaborate ways, often taking up their walking space in the hallways, their gears started to turn.

In their freshman year, instead of doing the experiment they were given, designing an aerodynamic wooden car to be raced down the hallway in an upcoming class period, the five boys, Donghyuck, Yangyang, Jeno, Renjun, and Jaemin, were leaning as far as their pre-growth spurt selves could lean towards the center of the table.

“So like, unless one of us gets a girl,” Jeno began. Renjun scoffed. “Thank you, Renjun. So assuming none of us do in the next two and a half years, wouldn’t it be funny if we promposed to  _ each other? _ ” Jeno grinned at the other four boys sitting around the lab table. Nobody spoke. How had none of them thought of this before… it was  _ hilarious _ . The initial shock had left some of them with their jaws unhinged, thinking about what was going to be the next blockbuster film, their broposals.

Now, almost two years later to the date, they were actually doing this.

Jaemin half-listened as Yangyang pitched ideas to him. Getting the theater kids to hook him to a wire so he could fly down from the stage like Peter Pan? No. They didn’t know any of the theater kids. Renting a dingy Peter Pan costume from the year-round Halloween store a few towns over? Maybe, if Yangyang wanted to abandon all dignity he had left. Maybe he could do something with donuts.

“Yeah, Renjun likes donuts. I mean, why wouldn’t he?” Jaemin looked up from his phone and squinted as he tried to remember the last time he’d seen Renjun eat a donut. He was sure he had. He would ask him about it later.

“Ok, donuts!” Yangyang exclaimed and started typing away on his phone, obviously way too familiar with donutposals but hey, at least one of them would get the promposal of a lifetime this prom season.

Who was Jaemin going to ask? Not Renjun, he’s taken. Not Yangyang, that’s obvious. Donghyuck? He’d have no idea what to even  _ do _ for him. He could ask Jeno. He’d known him the longest, and had already been teased in middle school about being gay for each other. It couldn’t get worse than it already was, and maybe he already had an idea brewing.

During physics that day, Jaemin’s notes were full of little spurts of ideas in the margins of the pages in bright blue ink. One that Renjun had given him a while back. Renjun, who was at the stool next to him, doodling faces instead of calculating the velocity of a marble going down a ramp, looked over and started reading what Jaemin had written.

“Jaem… ok I knew you were weird but what are you writing?” Renjun asked, putting the end of his pen in his mouth.

“Oh uh, you know, how I’m asking Jeno to prom,” Jaemin started. Renjun’s eyes widened as he chewed on his pen harder.

“You? Jeno? ...Prom?” Renjun started to sputter from behind the pen in his mouth.

“Not as a  _ date _ Junnie! You know… like a friendposal kinda thing? Broposal? Budposal?” Jaemin tried to explain to the older boy.

“Ahh… of course…  _ broposal _ . Got it. So how’re you asking him then?” Renjun flipped a page in his notebook and started taking his own notes.

“I’m not really sure about that part yet. I was thinking, Jeno likes basketball, yeah, but the whole gym is filled with people asking their girlfriends who don’t even  _ like _ basketball. It’s not worth it.” the boy sighed into his notes.

“Well, I know he must like  _ something  _ else. C’mon Jaem, you know him better than anyone in this school!” Renjun patted Jaemin’s back. Jaemin knew he did. And he knew he could come up with a better idea, but not right now. He still had some time to think.

After school, the five boys made their daily walk to the convenience store down the street from their high school. The store was barely big enough to hold the five of them, making them conga line down the tight aisles every time they walked in, but Jeno insisted they go  _ there _ rather than the bigger, much nicer 7/11 down the street because  _ they _ had the best Cola slushies in town. And after a long day at school sleeping through most of his classes, he needed one.

Each of the boys entered the shop, greeted by the cashier who was there without fail every day. Sometimes he didn’t make Jeno pay for his slushie. He’s never done that for the other four. Maybe he was a Lee family friend. Maybe he felt sympathy towards the frozen sugar addict. Jeno never told them.

“Hyuckie! You heard about prom, right?” Jaemin whisper-yelled at the tan-skinned boy while slapping his shoulder with a sticky, blue raspberry covered hand.

“Prom… uh yeah it’s soon right?” the older boy answered.

“Yeah,  _ it’s soon right? _ Duh, but do you know what you’re doing yet?” Jaemin teased.

“I didn’t think we were doing anything, Jaem,” Donghyuck shifted his eyebrows. Nobody had told him yet.

“Oh, you don’t remember… the plan from freshman year? Physics class?” the younger tried to push his thought process along.

“Freshman… physics…” Donghyuck thought his way through a brain freeze, “ _ Oh _ … we’re doing  _ that? _ ”

“Yes! We’re doing  _ that _ , now who are you gonna ask? I’m asking Jeno, Yang is asking Renjun, and now you can’t really ask me cuz that’s predictable, so I guess you have to ask Yangyang now. Don’t worry. I won’t tell him.” Jaemin smiled, accomplished.

“I guess I’m asking Yangyang then,” Donghyuck repeated, looking at the floor.

“Don’t worry. He’d be happy if you gave him a sticky note asking him to go,” Jaemin laughed, patting the older on the back, now with a stickier, more blue hand, and returning to the rest of the group.

-

It was early. Like,  _ unheavenly  _ early in Jeno’s book. But, like any good friend, he agreed to wake up to help Yangyang with his promposal for Renjun. They had a free period first, which was usually when Jeno was still sleeping and wishing he didn’t have to haul his ass to school, but today, he was in the auditorium hooking wires onto a harness over Yangyang’s Peter Pan costume.

“You  _ really _ sure this is the idea you want to go with? What happened to donuts?” Jeno asked, clipping a final metal clasp onto the back of Yangyang’s harness.

“Yes, I’m sure, I already have the costume on!” Yangyang said, testing the harness by putting his weight on it, “and you assume I have money for fancy prom donuts,”

“I never said they had to be  _ fancy  _ donuts, and you do already have the costume on so there’s no stopping you now I guess, me and Jaem will be waiting for your cue” he motioned to Jaemin, who waved back, already situated by one of the pulleys behind the curtains on the stage. 

“Perfect. Thank you two, again,” Yangyang said, pulling his Peter Pan hat on one more time to make sure it didn’t fly off when he took flight. 

Jeno walked to the pulley next to Jaemin, snuffing his laughter in his sweatshirt sleeve.

“You really think he’s gonna do it?” Jaemin whispered, connecting his phone to a bluetooth speaker he had brought to school, pulling up a ‘DISNEY’S GREATEST HITS’ playlist, looking for the song Yangyang had requested he play when Renjun walked in.

“Yeah, I mean, he’s already hooked up and everything,” Jeno answered. And then there was no more time to take it back anyway.

The sound of the auditorium doors opening echoed as a very tired, lanky Renjun walked in holding a styrofoam coffee cup. Yangyang held a thumbs up to the boys offstage. Jeno and Jaemin nodded to each other as they both yanked on the thick ropes holding Yangyang in place. The boy took flight as Jeno hit play on his Spotify playlist, blasting “You Can Fly!” from Peter Pan through his small speaker. 

“Renjun!” Yangyang yelled over the music as he flew in circles.

“Yang, what is all this?” Renjun cupped his hand around his mouth to yell up to Yangyang.

“You wanna go to prom?” Yangyang yelled, already breathless from being squeezed in his harness for a minute too long.

“All of this for  _ prom? _ Of course I’ll go!” Renjun started to crack a smile and laugh at the other boy’s obvious suffering. Jaemin and Jeno could be heard laughing behind the curtain as one of them let up on their rope, almost dropping Yangyang to his death, until the other caught it with his free hand.

-

Donghyuck still wasn’t on board with the whole broposal thing. If it wasn’t for his friends, he thought, he probably wouldn’t even be  _ going _ to prom. Even now, he’d be skipping dance practice to go, but he deserved a break. He also wasn’t the most creative of people, so he took Jaemin’s advice, and invested in a block of rainbow sticky notes at the closest Walmart.

He went into school early one day, at least earlier than Yangyang, who spent most of first period in the library sweet-talking the librarians to get them to write him late passes or bathroom passes so he could be anywhere but where he was supposed to be. It more often than not worked. Donghyuck used this 45 minutes of pure no Yangyang time to break into his locker (he got the combo from Jaemin) and start muraling the inside with the multicolor sticky notes, which he had ripped apart by color.

He started at the top with red, going down in rainbow order. Once the whole inside of his locker door was covered, Donghyuck took out a small bottle of white acrylic paint he had Renjun steal from one of the art rooms, and a small foam brush, and scrawled the word “PROM?” sideways to spread over the whole rainbow. Then it was time to wait. And skip more class. And wait some more.

As the second period bell neared, and Donghyuck was almost through with his three bags of Cheez-It’s he had stockpiled from the vending machine the day prior, he knew Yangyang had to stop by to get his gym clothes. He saw the younger trotting down the hall soon enough, hair bouncing with each step. Hyuck waved to him.

“Hey, Hyuckie!” Yangyang walked up to his locker and started at the combination, “don’t you have a class to get to?”

“Drawing. I can afford to be late” Donghyuck scraped up the last few of his Cheez-Its.

“Ah,” Yangyang opened his locker, about to reach down to grab his bag. He stood, eyes widening, as a few post-it stragglers floated to the floor. He turned to Donghyuck, his cheeks going red as he broke into a smile.

“Are you…  _ broposing _ to me?” Yangyang started to laugh as Donghyuck started to rock back and forth on his feet.

“I mean, what does it  _ look like I’m doing? _ ”

“Well, your answer is  _ yes _ ” Yangyang reached out to do their handshake, established in junior year english. Two fist bumps, up down, explosion.

-

Jeno’s broposal started and ended in the gym. With the entire basketball team.

He had been scared he was going to underperform, after helping Yangyang with his Peter Pan stunt, and hearing whispers from the other three boys on what they had been planning to do. He had picked to propose to Donghyuck, the same boy who had bitten him during carpet time in the second grade. He had grown out of biting now, Jeno hoped.

One thing Donghyuck definitely prioritized over biting Jeno was High School Musical. And Jeno was going to use that to his advantage.

Jeno had payed attention enough at every Boys Night sleepover to know that High School Musical definitely had something to do with basketball, which he could work with. Then he took it upon himself to do some research, by searching ‘high school musical basketball’ and ‘high school musical basketball song’ to see if anything sparked an idea, and it didn’t take long for him to find something. He stumbled upon “Getcha Head in the Game” and he knew.

It didn’t take that long to convince the rest of the team to perform with him to bropose to Donghyuck. He’d done enough for them, being one of the only seniors on the team, which also made him one of the only ones with a license. Jeno gave them an ultimatum: cough up the past years worth of gas money or do the song. They chose the option they could afford.

He didn’t make them wear the tacky wildcats uniforms (like he had the money), or even sing, but they did have to learn the dance, which, thankfully, most of them picked up pretty quickly. They had no other choice, due to Jeno telling them about the plan only four days prior to when he expected this to take place.

On the day of attack, he had Jaemin bring Donghyuck to the gym during lunch, telling him he had to go grab Jeno’s phone charger from him and  _ needed someone to walk with him _ . Donghyuck obliged.

Both of the boys could hear basketballs hitting the polished floor as they approached one set of double doors into the gym. Jaemin pulled one open and let Donghyuck walk in first. The team was already in formation. He saw Jeno off to the side of the court pressing play on his speaker, then running to the head of the group, his own basketball in hand. The performance was underway.

The song played out like any all-boys basketball team would perform any song from a Disney Original Movie. It was cute, but they had their fair share of mishaps. Basketballs getting out of hand and flung into the bleachers, boys paying more attention to their footwork than each other and nearly giving each other black eyes.

The song and dance was interrupted by the music fading out and a robotic voice taking over the speaker as Jeno took a step towards Donghyuck, “LEE DONGHYUCK, WILL YOU GO TO PROM WITH ME?” it said, as Jeno held out a copy of the movie on blu-ray to Donghyuck, who was wiping away tears after he had laughed too hard.

“I mean, am I legally allowed to say no to this?” Donghyuck took the movie in his hands and leaned in to give Jeno a hug. He didn’t like handshakes. “Yes I’ll go with you, dumbass,”

-

Renjun felt the pressure to get his broposal over with. He was working on his AP studio art portfolio most of his time, rarely stopping to eat, even. He had to work this event into his schedule. So, like anyone else in his situation would, he made more art. 

This specific piece of art happened to be a crayon drip painting, the kinds little kids make with hairdryers in their kitchen. Renjun did the same, with the addition of placing a heart shaped piece of cardboard in the center of the canvas before he took a blowdryer to the crayons, so he could peel it off when he was done.

After the crayons had all dripped down and onto a piece of tarp he had stolen from the art room, Renjun turned off the blow dryer and took the heart off the canvas, leaving a big blank heart amongst the colorful drippings. He used this empty space and an extra bit of pink paint from a project he was working on to paint “Prom?” in swirly letters. He finished off his piece by tying a bag of skittles to the back of the canvas when it had dried, with a cardstock tag that said “Please say yes<3 - Renjun” He dropped it in his locker before class and went on his way.

After a few periods, and hours of waiting for some sort of reaction from Jaemin, Renjun’s phone started pinging. He was supposed to be taking a math quiz, but he picked up his phone and saw the texts running across his screen.

jaemin:  _ XZSSATGYHJHYF _

jaemin:  _ CTTFTAAAAAAAAAA RENJUN _

jaemin:  _ OF COURSE I’LL GO WITH YOU _

renjun: _ thank god i spent TIME on that _

renjun:  _ and money _

renjun:  _ bc skittles... _

jaemin: _ well it’s very pretty _

jaemin:  _ i’ll hang it up :) _

jaemin:  _ and thank u for the skittles <3 _

-

Jaemin’s broposal was a bit more…  _ sticky _ . Jeno was not a very high maintenance man, and Jaemin didn’t have the cash to be high maintenance for him. But he knew what Jeno liked, and that was enough.

The younger scraped car floors and couch cushions for weeks scavenging for spare change his family may have dropped, because Jaemin’s own money was  _ precious _ . Precious enough not to spend on Jeno, at least. By the end of the week, when prom was nearing and Jeno had started using deductive reasoning to figure out who was supposed to be asking him to prom, Jaemin had come up with $2.76. Just one cent over the price of a medium slurpee.

He didn’t know how he was going to ask with  _ just _ the slurpee, but he had already spent the money on it. He found a piece of scrap paper in his backpack and took out a blue pen, writing “Will you go to prom with slurpME?” and laughed at his own joke as he taped it around the cup. Then he was on his way to Jeno’s. They had planned to work on a psychology essay that day. They probably wouldn’t.

“Hey Jeno!” Jaemin yelled as he dropped his backpack at Jeno’s front door, “I have something for you!”

“Hey Jaem! It better be food I’m  _ starving _ ,” Jeno said, coming downstairs to meet his friend.

“I mean it’s close I guess” Jaemin held out the slushie to Jeno, taking a sip out of his own.

“Thank you Jaem!” Jeno grabbed the drink, looking at the lined paper wrapped around it, reading it slowly. He laughed.

“That joke is really fucking bad” he took a sip.

“Hey! It’s better than nothing!” Jaemin shoved his shoulder as they walked to the kitchen to get some actual food.

“You’re right there, and I mean  _ sure _ , I’ll go with you” Jeno punched the younger boy back.

All five boys had been successfully broposed to, and now all there was left to do was put on their dad’s suits, all too big for them, and show up.

**Author's Note:**

> tysm for reading!! and thank you so much to my wonderful beta who helped me during the long process of completing this <3 pls leave a comment or kudos if you enjoyed!!


End file.
